Tagged: solar

Imagine you wanted to get in your electric car and drive a considerable distance. It wouldn’t take long for your car to run out of power, so you would have to have another car, one using gasoline, to drive behind you to make sure you reached your destination.

In today’s edition of the Heartland Daily Podcast, Managing Editor of Environment and Climate News H. Sterling Burnett talks with Randy Simmons. Simmons is a professor of economics at Utah State University. Simmons and Burnett discuss two studies he and his colleagues have done examining the economic impact Renewable Energy Mandates have had on the economies and people living in Kansas and North Carolina.

In an effort to get America off of fossil fuels, “free” solar and wind energy is often touted as the solution. However, in reality, the so-called free energy has high costs and does little to minimize fossil-fuel use or cut greenhouse gases.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, managing editor of Environment & Climate News, H. Sterling Burnett sits down with James M. Taylor. Taylor is a senior fellow at The Heartland Institute, focusing on energy and environment issues. Taylor and Burnett discuss an Florida Ballot initiative on solar companies.

In this edition of the Heartland Daily Podcast, managing editor of Environment and Climate News, H. Sterling Burnett talks with Benita Dodd. Dodd is Vice-president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. Burnett and Dodd discuss the recent solar power boondoggle in Georgia.

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) published a report February 12, 2015 “Filling the Solar Sinkhole Billions of Bucks Have Delivered Too Little Bang”. The report summarized, “In spite of government’s best efforts to encourage innovation by solar energy companies and encourage Americans to rely more heavily on solar electricity, solar power continues to be a losing proposition…”

In recent weeks, Dr. Wei-Hock Soon, a distinguished solar astrophysicist, coauthored with Christopher Monckton, Matt Briggs, and David Legates an important work of original scholarship in the Science Bulletin (previously titled Chinese Science Bulletin), a publication of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Increasingly over the past decade both federal and state governments have given special subsidies to, provided tax advantages for and mandated the use of solar energy as a solution to environmental concerns and the need for greater domestic energy independence.

The obvious successes of past technologies have made politicians and environmentalists eager to be in the forefront of promoting futuristic schemes for their goals. Everyone wants to be on the side of the next Great Idea. All too often these futuristic fantasies are sold to a gullible public, as well as fellow politicians and the news media, with impressive but scientifically-flawed arguments that bump up against harsh physical realities that are immutable.

Citizens concerned about high-cost electricity, skyrocketing government debt, and massive giveaways of hard-earned tax dollars to crony corporations should call or email their senators and their congressman – and explain why these subsidies should end now.

A couple of months ago, effective in November, National Grid, one of Massachusetts’ two dominant utilities, announced rate increases of a “whopping” 37 percent over last year. Other utilities in the region are expected to follow suit.

Champagne wishes and caviar dreams are coming true thanks to a government policy called net metering, which allows wealthy environmentalists who have installed solar panels on their roofs to profit unfairly at the expense of economically-disadvantaged people who can’t afford the technology themselves.

For decades, climate alarmists have been attempting to trigger global cooling by killing industry with carbon taxes and absorbing solar energy with windmills, solar panels and wood-fired power stations.

When I was in elementary school, my teacher taught our class about the food pyramid and the importance of a balanced, healthy diet. If we were going to grow up to be big and strong, we needed to eat the right amount of food from each of the basic food groups: grains at the base of the pyramid, fruits and vegetables on the second tier, meats and dairy diary products third, and fats, oils, and sweets, the smallest portion, at the top.

Here in America and elsewhere around the world, Greens continue to war against any energy other than the “renewable” kind, wind and solar, that is more costly and next to useless. Only coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear keeps the modern and developing world functioning and growing.

The 2014 US-Africa Leaders Summit hosted by President Obama this past week brought together the largest-ever gathering of African government officials in Washington, DC. They discussed ways to bolster trade and investment by American companies on a continent where a billion people – including 200 million aged 15 to 24 – are becoming wealthier and better educated.

President Obama, and his administration, has enacted so many foolish and cost-increasing energy policies, it is easy to think that they are his purview alone. But in 2007, Republicans were just as guilty. Seeds were planted and a garden of bad legislation took root in a totally different energy environment. At the time, the growth seemed like something worthy of cultivation. However, what sprouted up more closely resembles a weed that needs to be yanked out.

Letter to the EditorSomewhat Reasonable Wind and solar are parasitic power producers, unable to survive in a modern electricity grid without the back-up of stand-alone electricity generators such as hydro,[…]

The melting of glaciers is often cited as evidence mankind is causing global warming through carbon dioxide emissions. A corollary of this is that melting glaciers raise sea levels, which will reach catastrophic levels unless CO2 emissions are reduced. Adding to the massive evidence already refuting these assertions, a recent paper provides more accurate reconstruction of two centuries of previous data “by using many more stations, particularly in the polar regions, and recently processed historic data series from isolated island stations.”